Shellyw has a good question on the forums: what quests do you always skip? Blizzard is pretty good about the rewards system -- even if a quest is a pain to get through, they'll usually make the reward worth it. But there are quite a few quests in the game that just don't have anything you want, and just aren't worth the time putting into them.
Green Hills of Stranglethorn is mentioned early on in the thread, and I couldn't agree more -- any of those collecting quests I usually just give up on, as it's usually easier to just sell the pages off inside that zone to someone who is actually doing the quest. I often skip a lot of group quests as well, especially while leveling. While the rewards for those are usually very good (and they're often the end of long chains, which means both XP and items that come from them are great), it's often tough to find a group, so they usually sit in my quest log until grey and then get abandoned.
And occasionally, especially when I need space in my quest log for newer quests, I just plain skip anything that doesn't give an item that I need. If there's a choice of quest rewards, and none of them fit my class or spec, I'll just abandon the quest entirely to replace it with a quest that works better for me. What quests do you find skippable? How do you do triage on quests when your log fills up?
Jeff Kaplan, the lead game designer, posted in the forums under his username Tigole that Blizzard will be speeding up leveling in the 60 to 70 bracket just as they sped up the 20 to 60 bracket. This has long been rumored and it's great to see this get implemented.
Initial reports tell us the amount of experience points necessary to progress to each level has been decreased by 30% (for the 60 to 70 range only). Additional posters are reporting that mobs which give 500xp on the live server are now giving 600xp on the beta server. There doesn't seem to be any increase in the XP rewarded by quests yet, but this might be a future change.
Kaplan asks everyone to provide feedback on the change (if you're in the beta), and it looks like they've got his ear for the time being. So if you're in the beta and want to weigh in on the subject, now's the time.
Many thanks to the various users who submitted this news tip.
In the weeks previous to the releaseof the Burning Crusade some of my friends were considering saving up a number of quests to turn in once the expansion hit to boost their leveling toward 70.At the time it seemed absurd.You may have a bunch of quests to turn in, but they'd be all over the map, that's what questing was like back in the pre-BC day.I just wanted to get in and get through the Dark Portal.
It may be a viable strategy once Wrath of the Lich King comes out.Taking a look at my alts, some of them still have tons of Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley quests.Since it takes 779,700 experience points to go from level 69 to 70, I suspect it'll be around 850,000 to get from 7o to 71. This meas a log full of 25 shiny, complete quests at 10,000-15,000 XP a pop will take you nearly half the way to the next level.
It's not something I'd do on my main character, but I would consider it with an alt.What's your take on saving up quests for quick WotLK XP?
This forum thread talks about a person who dinged 70 while still back in Nagrand, and while I didn't finish off the run to 70 that early (he probably did lots and lots of instances), it is possible to bend the leveling curve a little bit, especially in Outland, where there are so many quests to go around.
So how far have you bent the leveling curve? Early on, it's pretty clear where to go to level up -- there are only a few areas you can go into at each level, and while there are definitely more quests than you need to do (especially in the newer Dustwallow Marsh content), things are pretty laid out for you. In Outland, though, things get a little squished -- Blizzard really went overboard with quests, and so it's possible now to hit the last level without ever seeing one or two of the zones.
Fortunately, any XP that you would have gotten at 70 is translated back into gold on a quest reward, so even if you've finished early, there's still lots of reason to go back and see what's out there (and there is some must-see stuff later in the game). But how off has your leveling been? Anyone hit 70 even before Nagrand?
Our good friend Boubouille at MMO Champion has news of an XP change in the game, but not where you might expect. Blizzard has secretly changed the amount of XP earned... at level 70.
But wait, you say, we don't earn XP at level 70! Ah, but we do -- after you hit 70, you actually continue to earn XP to level 71, but you never actually ding. And while before the patch, the amount you had to earn to "hit" 71 was about 814,700, now it's up to 1,256,500. Which makes sense -- while some folks are saying this might have been done to just fix a bug, Boubouille says it lines right up to the difference between vanilla WoW and the Burning Crusade, which means we'll need to earn about 50% more XP per level in Wrath of the Lich King.
Of course, this affects a few other things in the game -- Mania notes that pet loyalty is based on percentage level XP earned, so Hunters at level 70 will now need to hang out with their pets for longer to earn a higher loyalty level. But Blizzard isn't nerfing anything here -- from what we can tell, they're just lining up level 70 to become the first level of the next expansion instead of the last level in the game.
Gamers on the Street logs into U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.
I'm leveling too fast. My brand, new main character is already in her mid-50s and closing on BC content fast. One night's worth of questing while my husband was offline catapulted me two levels ahead and greened out our next planned instance. It took a week's worth of jostling to get our quest lines and zones back in sync with one another. And money for my mount at 40? Who are you kidding? Even with steady gathering from 1-40 with just that in mind, it took dedicated money-making days to bring in the cash I needed in time (err, relatively in time – I didn't mount up at level 40, that's for sure).
One of patch 2.3's handy-dandy, user-friendly changes was a boost in leveling speed for characters between levels 20 and 60. The XP required per level was reduced by 20 percent, and the amount of XP granted by quests between levels 30 and 60 was increased. Loot in leveling dungeons was improved. Oodles of outdoor elite mobs were changed to non-elites for solo-friendliness.
Fast forward a few months ... Do players like the results? We dropped in on the Ysondre server earlier this week to see what leveling players think about the current state of XP'ing in Azeroth. Read about their XP experience and share your own thoughts on how fast is too fast, after the break.
I've leveled up my share of alts in the past and I tend to be fairly strategic about doing so. The most important rule was to only play them when they had rest XP accumulated. Sometimes I'd enjoy a certain class so much that I'd occasionally break this rule, but I usually stuck to it. I know I'm not the only one that has done this. In all the various guilds I've called home over the last few years, I've often seen messages like "Well, time to switch over. Out of rest experience on this character."
The last patch dramatically increased the rate of character progression between levels twenty and sixty. Over the last week or so, I've popped over to my Shaman alt to check out some of the new content for lower levels. Running around, completing mostly greenquests, I got carried away and now find myself at level fifty. I progressed ten levels over the span of a few days with hardly breaking a sweat. This quick leveling has become addicting, but now my rest experience has run dry. I'm tempted to keep playing, but a voice in the back of head is nagging me to log off in an inn and to go play another character for a few days.
What have your experiences with the new experience rate been like? Are you a rest XP fanatic, like me? Or do you just keep plugging away, regardless of your rested state?
Over the weekend (while I was chowing down on turkey and mashed potatoes), Mania headed into the new PTR, and came back with some great news for Hunters leveling pets-- it's going to be faster.
Pets will require 33% less XP to level up on the PTR, which (I believe) is in addition to the player leveling changes. Pets still, however, don't earn XP from quests (which makes sense, in a strange way, I guess, because you could bring one pet on a quest, and bring another to turn it in), and they don't earn XP on grey kills, either. Mania's testing also shows that pets earn the same XP on both live and test realms, which means pets don't actually earn XP faster-- they just don't need as much of it.
Good stuff. I don't ever plan to actually level up a pet on its own (I have enough trouble leveling up my alts as it is), but it's good to know that the pet I've got coming with my lowbie Hunter will be grabbing XP faster than ever.
Warcry has a super interesting reading of the XP leveling changes that Blizzard is making in 2.3. Their style is a little more, err, informal than ours, but they're right-- Blizzard is basically stealing XP from you in the next patch. Vaneras confirmed the other day that players who have a certain percentage of XP before the patch will keep that same percentage of XP, but not the same amount of XP. So, if, for example, you're halfway through level 59 when the patch hits, you'll lose about 600,000 XP that you've already earned.
But before you get all angry about Blizzard wasting all that time you spent leveling, realize that things will likely even out in the end. Even though you'll lose 600,000 XP from the amount you have, you'll still be halfway through level 59, and you won't need as much XP as you did before to level to 60. So you haven't really "lost" anything, because even though Blizzard has "taken away" some XP, you didn't need what they took anyway.
As we've said before, these leveling improvements are going to be great news, not only for altaholics who are leveling up their third or fourth character by now, but also for guilds eager to see some new 70s to bring into the raiding mix. Folks who are leveling both before and after patch 2.3 are going to experience some strange math, but that happens all the time anyway (did you know that all the stuff you're killing at level 70 now doesn't count towards the experience you'll need to earn in the next expansion?). Blizzard is tweaking the numbers, but the experience will still be faster.
If you've ever been ganked by a twink in 10-19 WSG, you might chuckle at poor Neflm's predicament. He accidentally leveled his Witching Stave-wielding Warlock twink to 20. Apparently all it takes to kick a twink out of the battlegrounds... is 200 experience.
Of course, this is exactly what that XP toggle is for, if Blizzard ever chooses to implement it. Or if you want to go the other direction, you could just award experience in the BGs, which would definitely put a stop to twinking forever (and make Neflm's problem much more common).
But he can't be too distraught-- even if he's accidentally leveled his 19 twink to 20, there's always the chance to be a terror at 20-29. As even he says, in the comments, "at least Stonetalon should be a cakewalk."
If you listened to the latest episode of Titan over on WoW Radio (and did you hear that we're teaming up with them to do a new show, starting Saturday? You did? Good), you heard Totalbiscuit and Eriyanna talk all about twinks-- alts who are created just to rule a certain battleground bracket. Most players aren't real big on twinks, and Jonaleth straight out wonders why people do it. Is it just for fun, or do the people who stay at that level just want to deal with simpler strategies and less abilities (since lower level characters don't have as many tools to play around with as higher level characters)?
The bad answer is, of course, that people just like spending gold and time to rule the battlegrounds with an enchanted, blue-geared fist. But the "good" answer is probably that yes, there's a lot of strategy in squeezing as much power you can out of a lower level character. Totalbiscuit, in the podcast, actually says that what twinks do at 19 and 29 is really what all players do at 70-- work hard on gear and enchants to get every little drop out of a character with a limited level, and that's very true.
So here's an interested idea from Brook on Garithos: how about an XP toggle, where players can actually switch off XP gain if they so choose. That would bring twinking to a whole new level, and allow players who twink to go into instances and run groups over and over again just to get the gear they want.
Predictably, players aren't thrilled with that idea-- most people have enough trouble with twinks in the BGs already for Blizzard to more or less officially sanction the practice with an official feature like that. Sure, it would definitely bring a whole new aspect to twinking. But most players, it seems, think twinking has too many aspects in the game already.
Basically, using a newly tamed pet, a stopwatch, and a notepad, she determined that in order for a pet to go from loyalty level 1 (Rebellious) to level 2 (Unruly), the pet needs to gain 5% of the experience the Hunter needs for his next level. So a level 11 hunter needs 8800 experience to get to 12, which means a pet (of any level and family) needs to kill for 440 XP (5% of 8800) to go up a loyalty level with that Hunter.
Interesting. And the formula apparently works even when the pet isn't actually earning experience (ie when your pet is the same level as you are). However (and this is a big however), time is also playing a factor, and Mania's not exactly how it does-- she let her pet sit happy for a few hours, and then on the very next kill, the loyalty level went up. So it seems to be some combo of experience earned together and time (where more experience or more time can replace the other if necessary), but the exact numbers aren't there yet.
At any rate, good stuff, and Mania is being really thorough with it. If you're a Hunter who changes pets often, it's worth a read.
Reader Scott kindly dropped us a note (thanks!) that Nvidia released new drivers for Windows Vista on Tuesday, and hidden in the release notes is a note that the "low frame rates" within WoW have been fixed.
So if you're running WoW in Vista, have an Nvidia graphics card (with one GPU), and still having graphical problems, a driver update definitely wouldn't hurt. Things seem to have calmed down on the graphics issues since a few patches have hit, but maybe there are still a few of you out there looking for a solution.
As for us Windows XP users, looks like we're still stuck with an older driver version. If you've updated your drivers on XP and are still having problems, the best thing to do is probably just to let Blizzard know about it.
Update: Whoops, Slashrude (and other commenters) point out what I missed: these are beta drivers, which means installing them may not be such a good idea. Update at your own risk.
Mystic Worlds has a post up about some cool features coming in Warhammer Online that she wishes were in WoW. Basically, it boils down to the fact that WAR will reward you for killing quest targets even if you haven't actually grabbed the quest yet.
That would be darn helpful-- there have been times in Azeroth where I've killed 20 boars (for example) and then found out there was a quest to kill them that I just hadn't grabbed yet. MW says she worries that a system like this will mean random, indiscriminate killing across the landscape, but I already kill stuff indiscriminately as I'm wandering around-- it'd be nice to get an extra reward for it.
And while we're on the subject, I'd love to see some player-driven quests in the game. Something like 5-10k XP per week that can be awarded by your guildleader, just to keep you busy. Say, "win 3 AVs" or "run Shadow Labyrinth five times." Not only would it let GLs guide what their guildies were up to, but it would be another nice bonus for people leveling up, and considering there's 70 levels to get through now, quicker leveling is always good.
Finally, Mystic Worlds says she's also excited about their XP handouts for exploration, which Blizzard already does to an extent, but it'll be interesting to see how it's done in WAR. On one more (kind of) related note, someone in the guild recently suggested an awesome idea: see how far you could get a character just by finding all the discovery XP in the game. He said level 20, I say no more than 15. Anyone want to find out?
While the "rumor" that starts this thread is really stupid and completely untrue (that red quests will give you negative XP), later on, the thread actually clarifies a few things, even for me, about quests and the XP they grant at different levels.
Any quest you get has a level associated with it-- that's Blizzard's method of determining which quests you should do at which levels. As listed in the thread: Grey - Trivial Green - Easy Yellow - Somewhat Difficult (Blizzard says "Normal," but some yellow quests are more frustrating than others) Orange - Hard Red - Very Hard
(There are addons, also, that will do away with the whole color thing and simply tell you what level your quests are-- I use MonkeyQuest.)
But here's the thing, and this is something I had wrong: every quest you do gives exactly the same amount of XP, unless it's gray. If a quest gives 4000xp, it'll give 4000xp whether you do it at red, orange, yellow, or green. I had previously thought that a red quest would give more XP (because that's how it works with monsters-- higher level kills mean more XP), but that's not the case with quests.
And here's the other thing I learned: while killing a gray mob grants no XP at all, gray quests do give XP, but it drops for every level the quest is gray to you. That number is determined by this formula-- gray quests are 5 or more levels below you, and the XP you receive drops as your level rises.
Finally, while the same XP is given for a quest no matter when you do it, it still might not be worth it to only do green quests-- 1100xp is great at level 17, but not as helpful at 22. While doing red quests won't actually give more XP, they will push that experience bar farther (because the bar is relative to the XP you need for next level). As with mobs, you generally want to be doing yellow quests, while doing orange or red when you can (when you have a group willing to help out) and green when you have to.
Shellyw has a good question on the forums: what quests do you always skip? Blizzard is pretty good about the rewards system -- even if a quest is a pain to get through, they'll usually make the reward worth it. But there are quite a few quests in the game that just don't have anything you want, and just aren't worth the time putting into them.
In the weeks previous to the release
This forum thread
I've leveled up my share of 
Over the weekend (while I was chowing down on turkey and mashed potatoes), Mania 
Warcry has 
If you've ever been ganked by a twink in 10-19 WSG, you might chuckle at 
If you listened to 
Mania's Arcania continues its 
Reader Scott kindly dropped us a note (thanks!) that Nvidia 
Mystic Worlds has 
While 
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